Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:52 pm on 2 July 2019.
I'm glad to contribute to this debate today, because the devolution of air passenger duty is something that I've championed long and hard for many years, and I can't find a coherent argument to say why air passenger duty should not be devolved to this institution. In fact, I was on point in the negotiations on Silk for the Conservative group here, and when all the leaders were sitting around the negotiating table talking about income tax and talking about other measures, obviously this was one of the taxes that we did talk about.
I do sympathise with the point that was introduced—I think Rhun introduced it—about Stephen Crabb's comments some four years ago now, because there was a discussion about it going to Scotland as well at that time, and the northern airports as well, and how they might be affected, and it seemed to overcome that argument for it to be transferred to Scotland. It's not our problem what's going on in Bristol. Bristol are a commercial operation, and they seem to have a very successful model, to be fair to them, with 8 million passengers going through. If someone's trying to cite Bristol as an argument why we shouldn't transfer the duty, which I think has been the case, I just don't see that that should be a reasonable argument in this debate, to be honest with you. This is about— [Interruption.] Yes.